Andrew Revkin of the New York Times recently penned an entry to his DotEarth blog that referenced a study by the London School of Economics, which concluded that "contraception is the greenest technology." Specifically, the study argued that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 percent - which, the authors calculated, would ultimately result in a savings of 34 gigatons of CO2.
Revkin used the study to point to what he calls the "dubious nature of carbon credits" by raising - as a thought experiment, he emphasized, not an actual proposal - the idea that families in the United States who commit to having only one child could receive many tons of such credits, along the lines of those who would receive them for not cutting down forests.
And there it sat for a few weeks, until it landed on the desk of Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh somehow apparently contrived to see in Revkin's words a conspiracy to eradicate children, or perhaps all of humanity, sending him on a rant in which he equated environmentalists with suicide bombers and rhetorically asked Revkin why he didn't "just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?"
And he wonders why he isn't allowed to own an NFL team.
(Hat tip to Media Matters for America for the recording and transcript).
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